Bygone Cumberland and Westmorland

by Daniel Scott

The seating of the men and women on different sides of the church was a proceeding once so common as to almost remove it from the list of curiosities. The churchwardens’ books of Crosthwaite contain very minute orders as to where every person in the parish should sit, and in other places a similar rule obtained. In these days of “free and open churches” it is interesting to read of the arrangements which the churchwardens and vicar made so as to allocate every seat in St. Patrick’s Church, Bampton, in 1726. The rule appears to have been based on the land tax, and the list begins with “The Lord Vis. Lonsdale,” who had one complete stall for the use of the tenants of Bampton Hall, another for Low Knipe, and other seats elsewhere. The whole of the inhabitants seem to have been provided for, the catalogue concluding with a statement of the accommodation set apart for the school-master of Measand and the school-dame at Roughill; the master at Bampton Grange, being an impropriator, found a place among the aristocracy on “the Gospel side” of the chancel.

Some quaint entries concerning the provision and cost of wine for sacred purposes—and for other uses not always answering that description—are to be met with in several of the parochial records. In the vestry book of Cockermouth is this entry for June, 1764:—“Ordered that all the wine for the communicants be bought at one house where the Churchwardens can get it the best and cheapest. Ordered that no wine be given to any clergyman to carry home.” At one of the meetings of the Cumberland and Westmorland Antiquarian Society, the late Canon Simpson produced a paper which showed that very heavy sums, comparatively, had been spent at Kendal in providing Communion wine. One item was for £6, another £9, and again £11, while opposite one of the entries was the remark: “That is exclusive of wine used at Easter.” It was customary for the vicar or rector to give the Easter Communion wine, receiving in return Easter dues. On another occasion, when the Bishop of Chester was to visit the church, the wardens ordered a bottle of sack to be placed in the vestry.

An interesting ceremony has long been gone through at Dacre Church in connection with the distribution of the Troutbeck Dole. The principal representative of the family now living is Dr. John Troutbeck, Precentor of Westminster. The Rev. Robert Troutbeck, in 1706, by his will gave to the poor of Dacre parish, the place of his nativity, a sum of money, the interest of which was ordered to be “distributed every year by the Troutbecks of Blencowe, if there should be any living, otherwise by the minister and churchwardens for the time being.” A more curious proviso was contained in the will of John Troutbeck, made in 1787. By that document £200 was left to the poor of the testator’s native parish, and the interest was ordered to be “distributed every Easter Sunday, on the family tombstone in Dacre churchyard, provided the day should be fine, by the hands and at the discretion of a Troutbeck of Blencowe, if there should be any living, those next in descent having prior right of distribution. If none should be living that would distribute the money, then by a Troutbeck as long as one could be found that would take the trouble of it; otherwise by the minister and churchwardens of the parish for the time being; that not less than five shillings should be given to any individual, and that none should be entitled to it who received alms, or any support from the parish.” The custom was carried out in due form on the “through-stone” last Easter.

Kirkby Stephen, up to about sixty years ago, had a very curious custom—the payment, on a fixed day every year, upon a tombstone still in the churchyard, of the parishioners’ tithe. The late Mr. Cornelius Nicholson, in a now scarce pamphlet on Mallerstang Forest, gave the following account of the observance:—

“The tombstone is unhewn millstone grit, covered with a limestone slab, whereon a heraldic shield was once traceable, supposed to indicate the ownership of the Whartons. Tradition says, however, that it is older than the tombs in the Wharton Chapel. Among the parishioners it went popularly by the name of the great ‘truppstone,’ a corruption perhaps of ‘through-stone.’ It is certain, however—and this is the gist of the story—that for generations, time out of mind, the money in lieu of tithes of hay was here regularly paid to the incumbent of the church on Easter Monday. The grey coats of this part of Westmorland assembled punctually as Easter Monday came round, and there and then tendered to the vicar their respective quotas of silver. Some agreement, oral or written, must have been made between the parties, which does not now appear. The practice became the law of custom. The payment was called a modus in lieu of hay tithe. I find that when Lord Wharton purchased the advowson at the dissolution of monasteries the tithes of corn and hay were excepted from the conveyance, which points to this customary modus on the ‘truppstone.’ If this reference be correct, the curious custom dates back to the time of Henry the Eighth, and perhaps farther back, and gives it a continuance of some 300 years.

“We don’t know its origin, but we do know its extinction. When the Rev. Thomas P. Williamson became vicar, in the first decade of this century, a quarrel arose between him and the tithe-payers as to this modus. Law proceedings were threatened, and some preliminaries were taken. The parishioners, notwithstanding, attended on Easter Monday as before, and tendered their doles. The vicar also attended, but determinedly refused the money, until his death in 1835, which put a stop to the custom. After his death, the vicar’s widow set up a claim for the arrears, which had been offered and refused, so she took nothing by her motion. In 1836 all the tithes were commuted in England, under the provision of the Tithes Commutation Act, carried into execution by a Cumberland M.P., Mr. Aglionby, whom I knew very well, in Lord John Russell’s Ministry. These particulars of the ‘truppstone’ were furnished me by Mr. Matthew Thompson, Kirkby Stephen, one of the county magistrates, who himself—and this clenches it as a fact—yearly attended in the churchyard, with his quota, and who was present on the very last occasion.”

An incident which in some respects has had at least one counterpart within recent years is recorded as happening at Little Salkeld towards the end of the fourteenth century. The little chapel there was “desecrated and polluted by the shedding of blood,” and as the parish church of Addingham was a considerable distance, the vicar was allowed to officiate in his own vicarage-house “till the interdict should be taken off from the chapel.”

There is a curious story attaching to some of the wood-work of Greystoke Church. The misereres under the choir stalls are very quaintly carved, and one of them, “the pelican in her piety,” was for many years used as the sign of an inn near the church. From this circumstance the hostelry lost its old name, the “Masons’ Arms,” and acquired the modern one of the “Pelican.”

Although schools in churches were very common, the holding of Courts in such buildings could not have been frequent. At Ravenstonedale, where numerous customs peculiar to the parish or immediate district prevailed, the people had a strong belief in home rule, and insisted on having it. In the old church there were two rows of seats below the Communion table, where the steward of the manor and jury sat in their Court of Judicature in the sixteenth century. The malefactors were imprisoned in a hollow arched vault, the ruins of which were to be seen not much more than a quarter of a century ago on the north side of the church. There was so much wrangling over cases, and the manifestation of such a bad spirit, which the parishioners felt was unbecoming and unsuited to such an edifice, that they petitioned Lord Wharton, the lord of the manor, to have the trying of cases removed to a house belonging to him which stood near the church. This was granted, and subsequently the Court was held in the village inn and other places.

“A gentleman who carries out archidiaconal functions,” is the familiar, though vague, definition of an archdeacon in our own time, but a couple of centuries ago that church official had very definite duties and powers. As Mr. G. E. Moser, solicitor, Kendal, once reminded the members of the two counties’ Archæological Society, the visits of the Archdeacon of Richmond to Kendal—where he sentenced offenders from his chair of state erected in the High Quire—were looked forward to with awe and reverence. The churchwardens’ books contain the following among other entries:—“Paid for bent to strawe in the High Quire against Sir Joseph [Cradock] came.” “Paid to the Churchwardens, which they laid out when they delivered their presentments to Sir Joseph Cradock.” “Paid for washing and sweeping the Church against Sir Joseph’s coming to sitt his Court of Correction, which was the 7 July, 1664.” “At the peremptory day, being the 18th day of October, 1664, the general meeting of the churchwardens, whose names are herunder written doth order that Geo. Wilkinson shall keep the clock and chimes in better order, and shall keep swine out of the churchyard, and whip the dogs out of the church in time of divine service and sermon, and remove the dunghill and the stable-door which opens into the churchyard before the next peremptory day, and reform all abuses belonging to his office, or else the Churchwardens will make complaint so that it shall be referred to the ordinary.”